


every moment points toward the aftermath

by stiction



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Non-Chronological, Not Canon Compliant, Polyamory, Spark Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Spies & Secret Agents, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Threesome - F/F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:09:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22743793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction
Summary: “So you know what the mission is?” Arcee asked, her curiosity overcoming her anxiety.“We do,” Red Alert said. “There will be a lot of preparation first. A lot of small things to do before we get to the main event.”“Which is?”Nickel waggled her brows. “We’re gonna end the war, sweetspark.”(Unfortunately, the war has other plans.)
Relationships: Arcee/Nickel, Arcee/Nickel/Red Alert, Arcee/Red Alert, Nickel/Red Alert
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	every moment points toward the aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NonbinaryHylian (chicagoartnerd)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagoartnerd/gifts).



> hey, basil! happy femslash february. here's a heaping serving of TFA spy trine love. hope you enjoy <3!
> 
> (written for the TF Femslash Fic Exchange 2020, hosted by [choomchoom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom))

[then]

“I admire your dedication to serving the cause.” 

“I want to do what I can to help,” Arcee said. She held her servos still in her lap. “I may not be much of a fighter, but there are situations where being unassuming can be an asset.”

“Very true.” Longarm set the datapad containing her credentials aside and extended his hand over the desk. “Well, RC-687-040, I think that you’re exactly the kind of mech we need at this stage in the war.”

Arcee clasped it in her own, forcing herself to meet his optics and not stare at the mass-shifted cables in his arm. There was a swell of warmth in her frame, a sense of satisfaction that she hadn’t felt since the schools had shut down. Here was a purpose that would lead to a series of objectives, a list of achievable tasks. “Call me Arcee.”

“Welcome aboard, Arcee.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I look forward to training under you.”

“About that.” Longarm folded his hands, gaze drifting to the stack of datapads beside his console. “Due to the current level of need, Highbrow Prime has ordered that your intelligence training will be taking place primarily, ah, on the job, as they say.”

“On the job?”

“You’ll be provided with a syllabus of abbreviated datatrack downloads, of course, and your handlers will be able to assist you along the way.”

“Handlers,” Arcee repeated dumbly, feeling very much like her vocalizer had been set to echolalic output mode. “Right. I have--more than one?”

“Yours is a special case.” Longarm’s chair swung toward a stack of shelves and one of his arms unwound to retrieve a hardcopy folder that he laid in front of her. “As you so neatly put it, mechs with an unassuming frame type such as your own can be an asset. Highbrow Prime has a case in mind for you that will require additional support.”

Inside the folder were two personnel files and an encrypted datapad. She flipped through them, zeroing in on the image captures of her handlers. A valedictorian from Protihex Medical Mechanical and a senior medic. She wondered if she should be worried that she’d been assigned two medical staff, or preemptively offended that they’d paired her with two femmes. She was aware of the kind of assumptions that circulated in High Command. 

“I’ve taken the liberty of setting up a meeting between the three of you two joors from now. Review their files for now, and the three of you will be briefed by Highbrow Prime afterwards.” He paused, and then laid his hand on her shoulder. 

Arcee looked up from the dossiers. Her nervousness must’ve shown, because Longarm smiled warmly down at her.

“You’ll be fine, Agent Arcee. We will be behind you every step of the way.”

“Thank you,” she said again. “I won’t disappoint you.”

* * *

[now]

They returned to Cybertron almost immediately.

For some reason Arcee had expected the worst: pursuing Decepticons, warp drive malfunction, energon shortage, turbulence, asteroids, hull damage, an ambush, a betrayal. 

But as Omega Supreme landed on the airstrip outside the Metroplex, she was left feeling empty.

Arcee waited in the hold for the rest of their group to disembark. Ratchet had asked her to. 

She watched them from a port window. 

The Prime led the way to the Council steps, followed by a trio of Decepticons in cuffs, and then the four pallbearers and their charge. Part funeral procession, and part victory parade. 

That probably should’ve made her feel something beyond a vague discomfort. She’d never been one to attend funerals for mechs she didn’t know. And the victory--well, she supposed she understood that. The Decepticons were taking over, and now they weren’t. 

Arcee had gathered that much. 

The rest of it… 

She watched the little one carefully. Sari was so tiny that it was hard to believe that she was Cybertronian. Arcee _had_ felt something then, seeing Sari. She hadn’t been able to parse it. Her memory core was far from healed. 

Her helm ached beneath her plating. Ratchet said she’d been plugged in for far longer than she was willing to accept. There were consequences to that. Confusion. Atrophy. Mnemonic trauma. Someone could walk into the Iaconian Archives and tip every shelf of datapads over and the ensuing chaos would still be more organized than her memory banks.

There would be answers soon. She had to trust that there would be. 

But for now, she waited.

* * *

[then]

Arcee hovered outside the door to the medsuite, clutching the hardcopy to her chassis. She could hear muffled voices on the other side. Her chronometer said she was still a few kliks early, but it stood to reason that both of her handlers were already there. The fact that they were both medics still had her wondering exactly what kind of work Highbrow had in mind. 

She set her palm to the access panel. As the door slid open, Arcee thought that it probably would’ve been polite to knock.

“-you slagging hypocrite!” A minibot barked, slamming what looked like a strut saw back into storage. She froze when she saw Arcee. “Oh! Hi!”

“Hello,” Arcee said. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m Arcee, as you… probably already know.”

Her other handler stood. “Red Alert. You weren’t interrupting anything. I was just reminding Nickel of her duty of care.”

Nickel rolled her optics and muttered something. 

“I heard that,” Red Alert said. “Please, come in, and don’t mind the ex-Con.”

“Oh, _real_ mature, Red. Going right for the low blow. And ‘duty of care’? _Please_ . Don’t let her fool you.” Nickel turned toward Arcee and jabbed one finger at a line painted on the floor. “She’s mad that I left one of my tools on _her_ side of the bay after I spent three straight joors in surgery!”

“Routine maintenance.” Red Alert pressed her servos to her helm. “Barely surgery.”

“I can come back later?” Arcee offered. 

“No!” They said in unison. 

“This is--” Red Alert started.

“Well, you’re--” Nickel said.

Both of them hesitated. 

“It’s important,” Nickel said finally. She hopped up onto the medberth, her wheels dangling. “ _You’re_ important. Or so we’ve been told.”

Arcee stifled the pleased pulse of her spark. Her curiosity overtook her anxiety. “So you know what the mission is?” 

“We do,” Red Alert said. “There will be a lot of preparation first. A lot of small things to do before we get to the main event.”

“Which is?”

Nickel waggled her brows. “We’re gonna end the war, sweetspark.”

* * *

[now]

“This shouldn’t hurt,” Sari said. “It didn’t last time, right?”

“Right.” Arcee laid back on the slab. She stared at the ceiling, tracing the tiles and cables before she turned to Ratchet. “Can… can I stay online for this?”

“Of course,” he said, setting a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away. “I’ll turn your sensory receptors off.”

There was a little knot in her spark at the sadness on his face. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that the hand on her shoulder had reminded her of--of… something. It wouldn’t be long until she found out, she supposed. And then she could tell him. She could explain it. 

They had interred his friend today. He didn’t need any more darkness. 

“I’m going to disconnect your memory storage module from your processor until we’re finished,” Ratchet said. A wave of fear rose in Arcee’s spark, but he held a servo up to stop her protest. “ _Only_ until we’re finished. I don’t want the feedback from your emotional core to flood your spark. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to you, Arcee.”

“No way, no how,” Sari confirmed, snapping a quick salute. “You ready?”

Arcee laid back and folded her hands on her chassis. “I’m ready.”

* * *

[then]

When she went to the labs, there wasn’t much for her backup processor to do but sort through her short-term databanks. Her processor had probably never been so well-kept. 

She was thinking today about her habsuite. The night prior, she’d come stumbling in after a courier mission tired enough that her legs threatened to fall off her chassis. Nickel had caught her easily when she slumped over in the front hallway. Nickel's strength never failed to surprise her: Arcee wasn’t a heavy frame, but she was twice as tall. And Nickel had just slung her over one reinforced shoulder and ferried her to her berthroom. She was mostly in stasis by the time she heard Red Alert come in.

“She okay?” 

“Fine. Just exhausted. All these scrap missions are really wearing her down.”

“You refueled her?”

“Cripes, Red, she’s not a sparkling. Her fuel levels are fine.”

And there had been a sound, a sound like soft metal meeting, before she heard footsteps, before Red Alert’s cool hand touched her forehelm. The sound had been like--

Arcee’s processor onlined with a cheerful ping. 

[MODULE 84-07-ZX INTEGRATED]

“The neural interfacing upgrades are complete.” Perceptor closed her posterior helm panel. “You will be prepared to helm Omega Supreme once construction is complete.”

“Complete?” Her frame didn’t feel any different, even as she ran a hand over the back of her helm. The memory she had been reviewing lingered amongst her ongoing processes. “He’s not finished yet?”

Perceptor had already turned back to the bank of consoles. “Omega Supreme is a highly complex mechanism. Mistakes due to haste would be unacceptable.”

“Oh.” 

“Highbrow Prime has relayed that your next order is to convene with your handlers and await further instruction.”

“Roger that,” Arcee sighed. 

She pinged their cell’s shared commlink as soon as she was out of the lab and on the road back to the apartment. The little habsuite in central Iacon had been set up by Longarm. It was close enough to headquarters that any of them could make the drive in a manner of kliks. On record, neither the apartment nor the inhabitants had anything to do with Autobot Intelligence. 

Red Alert had shared the encryption algorithm with her after that first meeting, but her processor still lagged in the translation. 

There was no response. When she checked the calendar they used to coordinate duty rosters, she saw that Red Alert would be on shift for at least another joor. Nickel was unaccounted for, though that could mean anything. Nickel managed to actually have a few friends. Arcee had always worked too much for that and so, it seemed, had Red Alert. 

But when Arcee stepped through the front door of their apartment, she could hear someone in the washracks. 

“Nickel?”

The noise stopped. She stepped closer to the washrack door. It was open a crack, enough for her to see a flash of blue plating. 

“Don’t c-c-come in,” Nickel said. Her vocalizer skipped with an unpleasant clicking. 

“Are you… Is everything okay?”

“It’sss _fine_ ,” Nickel snapped. “ _Don’t_ \--” 

She went silent. 

Arcee hovered by the door. She wasn’t going to leave, but staying left her out of her depth. She’d soothed sparklings before, sure, her students had been susceptible to emotional flareups as their personality subroutines stabilized, and Nickel shouted at least once per day as a rule, but she doubted this was anything to do with some dented knees or a rude patient. 

Something crashed against the wall inside the washracks and suddenly Nickel was standing, seething, in the doorway. 

“I’m gonna kill someone.”

Arcee held her hands up. “Not me, I hope?”

Nickel didn’t laugh. Her hand rubbed roughly across her chassis. There were streaks of purple running down her frame, circular smears on her paint like she’d had a bad buff job. “Not you,” she spat. “Some mechs don’t let the ‘ex’ in ‘ex-Decepticon’ stop them.”

“Oh,” Arcee sighed. The energon in her tanks soured. “You mean...?”

“I mean I got mugged outside a restaurant and _tagged_ .” Her face shifted between hard anger and a softer thing that looked to Arcee like shame. “Back and front. And wouldn’t you know it, one of the only fragging things my hands _can’t_ do is reach my rear cab.”

“Oh,” Arcee said again, craning her neck. Nickel rolled her eyes and turned around to reveal the glaring Decepticon symbol spray-painted on her back. It sent a shiver through Arcee’s frame. It always had. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah,” Nickel agreed. “It is.” 

Arcee’s hand hovered over the paint. She had let her arm extend without thinking. Nickel touched her all the time, welding little leaks, rubbing her helm after successful missions, plugging in to check her diagnostics with a cheeky wink. It wasn’t clear whether or not she was allowed to return the favor. “Let me help you get it off.” 

Nickel stood very still. “It’s a stubborn mark,” she said finally. 

“And I’m a stubborn mech.”

Nickel snorted and lowered herself to the ground beside the drain. “There’s some paint thinner and meshcloth by the door. Knock yourself out, ‘Cee.”

Whoever had done it had used factory-grade paint, and it took almost a joor for Arcee to lift the paint from Nickel’s armor. Nickel didn’t talk at all while she worked. It weighed on Arcee’s spark at first, until the repetitive motion--applying thinner, rubbing with mesh, rinsing with solvent and applying more thinner--soothed her. 

When she was finished, she poured a bucketful of warm solvent over the raw paint. Nickel’s self repair would smooth over the streaks by morning. 

“Thanks,” Nickel said. 

“Let me finish the front.”

She stood up and turned to stare mutely at Arcee’s hands as they wiped the smears of purple from her chassis. Arcee chased the trails down to Nickel’s hips, focusing on nothing but the task at hand. It wasn’t until Nickel twitched and reset her vocalizer that she realized she’d been wiping at a dried smear at the edge of, presumably, Nickel’s interface hatch. 

“Sorry!” Arcee squeaked, at the same time that Nickel forced a smile and said, “Normally I’d buy you dinner first.” 

Arcee laughed. It didn’t sound good.

Nickel’s smile faded to a grimace. She craned her neck to see her frame in the mirror beside the washrack and frowned.

“I’m gonna kill someone,” she said again.

“Please don’t,” Arcee said. 

“No, I’m gonna do it.” Nickel nodded at her own reflection, turning around and craning her neck over her shoulder armor to see her back. Her expression had darkened again, had started to show that sad mix of anger and shame. “I’m out here busting my aft for the Autobot cause in the hospitals _and_ doing this crazy Intelligence shtick, and all anyone sees if they go on Autopedia is _ex-Con_. Slag-suckers can eat my fragging valve.”

“Hey,” Arcee said. “Come here.” Her spark spinning wildly, she reached out to tug Nickel away from the mirror. On her knees, she was just a bit taller than Nickel. She couldn’t place the heaviness, the sudden ache, but it made her bold, made her reach for Nickel’s helm with both hands. Her palms were big enough to span Nickel’s audials, pressed firm against her helm by her armor flares. “Frag the public opinion. They don’t know what we’re doing here.”

Nickel laughed with a rough choke of her engine, leaning into Arcee’s hands.

“I mean it,” Arcee insisted. “I know you’re angry, but you’re better than that. You’re better than them.”

“You’re sweet.” Nickel laid her hand over Arcee’s spark. Her gaze had gone soft. “You won’t deck me if I kiss you, right?”

Arcee's processor refused to analyze anything but the strange look in Nickel's optics. “No?”

“Oh, good,” Nickel said, and then she hooked her fingers in Arcee’s armor and pulled her down. She missed the first time, her lips landing on Arcee’s chin. 

Arcee shifted into it on instinct, her processor blank and her spark thumping against its chamber like it wanted to break loose and engulf Nickel’s hand.

Nickel tugged again, and this time their lips did meet, a slow brush before they moved again, leaned into a deeper kiss. Arcee’s hands tightened over Nickel's audials, the long line of her antennae pressed between two fingers, and she felt Nickel smile, felt the slight opening of her mouth and let her lips part in turn. 

The solvent had cooled around her knees, had dried in patches on her armor, and the brush of Nickel’s hand over an uneven patch brought Arcee back to reality. 

She broke away but couldn’t go far. Nickel’s hold on her armor was firm. The thump of her spark had only worsened. 

Outside the washracks, the front door of the apartment clicked open. 

“It’s okay,” Nickel said, nonsensically. 

Arcee didn’t pull out of her grip, only sat dumbly on her heels, staring into Nickel’s calm face as she listened to Red Alert make her way to the open doorway. 

“Oh, you told her?” Red Alert asked. She stepped into the room and stopped short. “Why is there paint thinner everywhere?”

“Wait,” Arcee said, leaning back to stare between the two of them. “Told me _what?_ ”

* * *

[now]

“Make sure you let the data integrate steadily,” Ratchet said. “Don’t force it or you could overload a circuit.”

Arcee shuttered her optics. It was easier to focus that way. There was a snap as Ratchet reattached her memory module. 

She started the defrag cycle.

The incoming data did not come chronologically. She throttled the input, and spare moments trickled in--a hand on her chassis--the cold dread of jacks in her processor--Omega Supreme’s protoform surrounded by scaffolding--the stump of her leg in Ratchet’s hands--and--sparklight, spilling over her frame. She tripped on the memory and fell deeper. 

The light surrounded her. 

Arcee sat up, scrambling to rip the failsafe jack from her helm. 

“Arcee-!” Ratchet protested. “What the frag do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m bonded!” she yelled. She was off the berth and backing toward the door before she thought twice about it. “Oh Primus--I’m _bonded_.”

Sari hovered closer, ignoring Ratchet’s outstretched arm “Uh, is she okay?”

“I’m--I’ll be okay, I will, I promise. As soon as I sort all of this out I will comm you, I will call, I will come back here and let you poke around in my helm until you’re satisfied, but right now--” Her spark ached again, so acutely that the throttle on her memories faltered. 

_Proximity pains_ , someone had said to her, at some time, in some place she couldn’t see. _Guess we’ll just have to bond again soon_.

 _Oh, and it’s_ such _a hardship._

“I have to go!”

Arcee was faster than either of them on foot. Nobody tried to stop her as she bolted from the hospital. She transformed as soon as she was clear and hit the road with her tires squealing. She hadn’t driven since--since--she didn’t know, only saw flashes of roads disappearing beneath her bumper, felt the muted emotions of her memories. 

The joy of racing someone. The slow sightseeing drives with her class, half of them still adolescent and bound to riding behind her in a trailer. The engine-thumping need to escape from something bigger than her, _faster_ than her, blaster fire scorching her armor until a lucky shot caught her in the axel and--

The flashfire of panic in Arcee’s circuits shook her spark chamber and threatened to throw her out of her alt mode. She clung fast to the road, channeling her panic into her engine as the thousand navigational paths her memory banks spit out narrowed to hundreds, dozens, and then, finally: one. 

It led her around the capitol building, that soaring tower that set off another wave of micro-memories. 

She weaved around other cars, dodging pedestrians as she cut across the packed main roads to the residential block. 

There was a building she kept seeing, a tall, thin cylinder attached to the address in her nav-comp. She transformed without braking when she saw it, ignoring the wave of honks. 

Someone had taught her to drive like that, she thought, staring up at the tower from the edge of the road, they must have. Or--a datadisk appeared in her mind, slid across the desk by a mech that turned her energon to sludge. 

Ratchet had told her only that she was Autobot Intelligence. 

_Welcome aboard._

A shiver struck her protoform. The looming building became something huge, something horned.

Arcee was cold in the shadow of it.

As it reached for her with clawed hands, she fumbled around her mind like a mech blindfolded and found the download throttle. 

The shadow vanished into the building, so tall and straight before her. Hornless and handless. 

Arcee stepped through the front door. 

Her navcomp blinked helpfully back to life, guiding her to the elevators. She shuttered her optics on the smooth ride up, and the sparklight rushed in again.

* * *

  
[then]

“It’s a bad idea,” Arcee said. 

“No, it’s a _great_ idea,” Nickel said, rolling her optics. She had barely stopped touching Arcee since that orn in the washracks. Her hands would settle on Arcee’s legs, pat her chassis, stroke her helm, and, now, they pressed her to the berth so Nickel could straddle her hips. 

Nickel, it had turned out, was insatiable. 

Even so, she jumped as Red Alert grasped her hips and held her still.

“It’s a bad idea,” Red Alert said, before she moved in closer and rocked Nickel’s frame forward so that her panel ground down against Arcee’s.

“High Command has, has bad ideas every day. Worse ideas,” Nickel argued. Below her rambling, Arcee heard the click of her panel opening, felt the wetness of Nickel’s valve on her plating. “Theirs are more expensive-- _and_ more dangerous. And we still _do_ them.”

“This is pretty dangerous,” Arcee cut in. It was a struggle to keep her processor engaged, to stop her panel from popping immediately. She didn’t say no. She didn’t want to say no, but she knew--she’d heard: “The feedback, if something happens…” 

A humming hardlight hand cupped her cheek, tilted her head back from where she’d been staring, absorbed, at Nickel’s bared array. 

“Nothing’s going to happen.” Red Alert’s gaze was stern. 

Arcee nodded. She swallowed every _but_ and _well_ and _what if_. She trusted. In her lap, Nickel let out a sharp squeak and hitched her hips, probably trying to catch her node on the edge of Arcee’s armor. Her fingers traced the seams of Arcee’s panels. 

“That doesn’t mean that bonding is a smart thing to do,” Red Alert continued.

Nickel scoffed, hissed, “Slag you, Red.” Arcee let her panel retract and Nickel’s voice dropped into a moan. “M’just as smart as you. ‘Cee’s probably smarter than both of us.”

“You are,” Red Alert said drily. She moved Nickel with an unhurried rhythm. “And she is. Regardless, the feedback from a three-way bond could make the consequences of an offlined partner less intense. Depending on the sparktypes and the intensity of the bond, it could also double the risk of a collateral fading.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you have the pillow talk skills of a space barnacle, Red?” 

Arcee could tell that Nickel wasn’t mad, not _really_ mad--her valve slid, flexing wetly, over the base of Arcee’s pressurizing spike. The bickering was as much foreplay as the kissing. Red Alert bent over them to bite one of Nickel’s antennae. 

“You glitch.” The hard dig of Nickel’s fingers into her armor had Arcee squirming. Her fans spun higher as Nickel’s fingertips hooked into her side vents and her frame said [OBSTRUCTION] and her frame also said _yes_.

“It’s a risk.”

“I want to,” Arcee said. She covered Red Alert’s hands with her own and didn’t shrink under the sudden weight of both of them staring at her. They knew what she wanted. She’d said it before. Her spark was heavy and warm with the waiting. 

Arcee set the cue. Her armor transformed away. 

“I want to,” she said again as the aperture of her spark chamber spun open and cast blue light over the berth. 

Nickel’s frame shuddered in her lap, charge snapping off her armor. Her grip on Arcee’s vents tightened. She was locked on the glow of Arcee’s spark as she lifted up on her trembling legs and sank onto Arcee’s spike. Arcee’s mouth fell open into a moan, the sudden heat in her circuits overwhelming. Her spark flared with it, the light playing over Nickel’s rapt face. 

“You want to,” Nickel murmured, her frame tipping back against Red Alert’s chassis. “Red, she wants to, wants us.”

“I heard her,” Red Alert said, but her voice was hushed. 

“Still a bad idea?”

“Awful,” Red Alert sighed. “Just terrible.”

“And you want it too,” Arcee said. She knew it, felt the pull through their armor. She sat up, her spike shifting in Nickel’s frame. She ignored the undignified noise that Nickel made, swallowed the undignified noise that tried to leave her own mouth, and laid her palm over Red Alert’s chest. Red’s hands moved Nickel’s hips a little faster, rolling her frame against Arcee’s. 

“In the least professional way,” Red Alert said. 

“Frag professionalism,” Nickel gasped. “Pop your panels already, Red. Join the party.”

“I will,” Red Alert said. She leaned forward as Arcee did the same, pinning Nickel’s frame between them. “I will.”

Arcee had worried about it before, about hurting Nickel, but the squeeze of her fingers in Arcee’s vents, the quick flex of her valve around Arcee’s spike every time someone moved her bodily around the berth, helped her not to worry. 

Red Alert shook herself, looking away from the glaring sparklight in time to tilt her head into Arcee’s kiss. Nickel was barely moving now, only tiny hitches of her frame as Red Alert laid her good hand on Arcee’s neck and pulled her closer. 

Arcee’s spark ached sweetly--wanted to pull itself out of her chest--wanted another spark to tie itself to--and she moaned into Red Alert’s mouth at the tug of fingers tracing through her corona. 

Someone pushed her back down to the berth, she didn’t see who, only saw Nickel venting heavily into the sudden space, her hand pushing through the outer threads of Arcee’s spark and into the core. 

“Oh,” Arcee sighed, and, sharper, “ _Oh!_ ”

Her vocalizer turned to static. 

Later, her chassis smeared with transfluid and beaded with condensation, Arcee lay pinned to the berth under the weight of two frames. 

_Bonded_ , she thought, smiling at the ceiling. _I'm bonded._ Her spark was full and still ached for more. The swell of energy was so sweet that it nearly hurt. 

“Stop being a sap and turn that big beautiful processor off,” Nickel mumbled into the side of her helm. 

Arcee couldn’t help the surge of love in her spark even as the other two twitched with the force of it. 

“Sleep,” Red Alert muttered, resting her hand over Arcee’s Autobrand. Over her humming spark.

* * *

[now]

The door in front of her was known and unknown. 

Arcee raised a hand to the intercom, and then stopped. She lowered it instead to the lock panel. 

It beeped and turned green. Her spark spun, engine knocking in her chassis, as the door slid open. She had expected... something harder than this. But this was easy. Stepping inside was easy.

* * *

[then]

<red?>

<Agent.>

<mission failure imminent.>

<Cause?>

<significant frame damage. unable to transform.>

<Understood. Sending medical assistance.>

Arcee stared down at the place her leg stopped existing. It hurt less than she’d expected. That was probably shock. 

<not you?>

Red Alert hesitated. 

She was breaking protocol here, on a questionably secure channel.

<Alternate medical help closer.>

<as good as you?>

<On par.>

A datapack popped up on her commline, the personnel file for the closest medic: Ratchet. She’d heard that name before, she thought as her self-repair nanites sealed the cap of her leg. 

<Stay safe, Agent.>

<roger that.> Arcee pulled herself further into the shadows and drew her blaster. <see you soon.>

* * *

[now]

When she stepped through the door, she was hit with a heavy data duplication error. 

She stood, frozen, and stared at the overlay of memory and current input. Not much had changed. A woven meshcloth rug sat in front of the door--different than the one that had been there before. Arcee wiped her feet, absorbed in the new pattern. 

A voice called out from another room: “Nickel? You're home early.”

Arcee’s vocalizer failed her. The sound of another mech in the apartment grew louder, footsteps tracking toward the door. 

“Nickel, you know I don’t appreciate…”

Red Alert stopped in the hallway’s entrance. 

“Hey, Red,” Arcee managed.

* * *

[then]

Arcee drifted. 

She had strange fluxes.

Sometimes things came close to making sense--her classes were much fuller than they had been recently, though she couldn’t remember why they had thinned.

Sometimes… The things in her fluxes seemed more present than that. She sat upright on the end of a medberth and she was cold, she was freezing and her processor was being picked apart like junk at a smelting plant. There were mechs there, grown mechs. She couldn’t see them, not clearly, but her circuitry clicked and whirred as it tried to match blurry faces to names, and then she went not grey but

quiet. 

And the quiet

stretched

.on 

Until her circuits completed. Until the cold moved in again. 

And her mind said: familiar? trust?

And her spark said: DANGER. 

And her frame said: _no. no. no. no. no. no. no._ in a babble of binary and sensory feedback that whited her optics out. 

And--and her class was whole again. This week they would be discussing the function of energon in the body. She had planned a field trip to a processing plant tomorrow. 

[now]

“Arcee,” Red Alert said. She set the box in her arms down and moved gingerly toward Arcee, her hand outstretched but not touching. 

Arcee understood. 

She leaned forward, caught Red Alert’s hand in hers and brought it to her face. 

“Oh,” Red Alert said. “It _is_ you.”

“Yeah. It’s me.” Arcee squeezed Red Alert’s hand, the other reaching for her interlink. Red Alert's frame was covered in thin weld scars, her armor not quite lining up. “You’re hurt?”

“Old wounds. You’re… alright?”

“Far from,” Arcee said. “But I’m standing. Nickel?”

“Off shift in half a joor.”

“Good,” Arcee said, “That’s good,” and in a moment she went from leaning into Red Alert’s hands to nudging her back against the wall. Her processor might’ve been glitching, or everything was moving at double speed it normally did, or she was just kissing her sparkmate for the first time in centuries, venting the same air, their frames occupying the same space. 

She made a needy noise deep in her vocalizer, and they were stumbling through the apartment to the couch in the communal room, dropping in a tangle. Her frame was draped over Red Alert’s lap and her panels had clicked back at some point and she was saying, “Please, please--!”

Red Alert smoothed a hand over her chassis, fingers in her biolights, and said, “We should wait for Nickel.” But she plucked along the cables bundled in Arcee’s hips, charge singing in her wake, and her hand tingled on Arcee's armor. 

Arcee’s frame jerked as Red Alert’s fingers stroked her valve. The ache in her spark rose to a whine as her chest armor split, energy threading off in hot pulses. Red Alert tipped her chin up with the end of her interlink and said: “Save your spark for all of us. Together.”

The corona of Arcee’s spark flared high, so close to half of what it had missed for centuries, but she nodded, she laid back against the arm of the couch and pressed her hips up into Red Alert’s hand. Her spark ached still, but sweeter now, not like it threatened to put her offline, and the pain mixed with the need in her circuits, the wash of heat that came with Red Alert’s fingers dragging over her internal nodes and filling her valve like the last time had been yesterday, like she’d never forgotten, like--

Arcee’s charge crested so sharply that she could do nothing but cover her mouth with her hand and hold fast to Red Alert’s wrist. She rode the overload out with her whole frame shaking, Red Alert bending to press their forehelms together, murmuring something Arcee couldn’t parse. 

“I missed you,” Arcee said once she had figured out how to work her vocalizer again. “I missed you both so much.”

Red Alert pulled her closer. “We thought we’d lost you,” Red Alert said, “When you were taken from the infirmary.”

“I had these horrible sparkaches every time I came out of stasis, and I had no idea why. I couldn’t remember that you existed until a joor ago.” Arcee fit her fingers carefully into the chamber of Red Alert’s transfer interlink and wiggled them to say, ‘ _see? I remember now_ ,’ to see her melt. 

“It’s been… difficult. For both of us. Nickel almost lost her job after what happened to Ultra Magnus.”

At Arcee’s blank stare, Red Alert sighed. “We have a lot to catch you up on. An inside agent attacked Ultra Magnus. Anti-Con sentiment soared and sparked a spy scare in the government ranks.”

 _An inside agent_ , Arcee’s processor noted. A well of information rose up, pushing against her lock on the data download, and she forced it back. She would have this, this one uncomplicated day, before she threw herself back into the mire of old memories. 

Red Alert was watching her carefully. 

“Tomorrow,” Arcee said, gripping the end of Red Alert’s interlink. The hardlight generator clicked and spat a jolt of energy through her fingers. She could ask Red Alert to activate it inside her spark chamber later, maybe, if Red thought it was safe. A part of her was shocked they hadn’t done that already, but maybe they _had_. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

She was thinking about that, about all the time they had now, and thinking about the likelihood that she could talk Red Alert’s panels open before Nickel came home, when the apartment door slid open. 

“In here,” Red Alert called, her gentle hand keeping Arcee’s chassis down.

“You know, I get that funerals are sad and all,” Nickel said, “but I’ve never understood why they shut the whole city… down...” She looked almost the same as Arcee remembered her, her paint a little duller, the glass on two of her gauges cracked. 

“Look who I found.” Red Alert’s hands traced over the edge of Arcee’s open spark chamber.

“Oh.” Nickel’s face was even but the tremble in her hands betrayed her. “Hi.” 

Arcee pushed up on her elbow, Red Alert’s fingers splayed over her plating, and held a hand out.

Nickel took it and let herself be drawn in. 

“Took you long enough,” she said finally, kneeling next to the couch. Her armor jumped over her chest in tiny flashes of sparklight.

“I know,” Arcee said. “But I’m home now.”

**Author's Note:**

> arcee wakes up the next morning to 200 missed calls from ratchet and a 'congrats on the sparkbond' from sari
> 
> dynamic brought to you by: the concept of "hermann/newt but if raleigh had gotten involved too"
> 
> title from 'sax rohmer #1' by the mountain goats.


End file.
